Unlike its much-scrutinized counterparts in basketball, who hunker down in a hotel for a long weekend of analysis and strategy in picking the field, this five-person group essentially lets the statistics do the deciding.

Sure, there is a human element to assigning the four regions and seeding the teams before the bracket is unveiled late Sunday. But in contrast to the handful of basketball teams sitting on pins and needles when the draw is announced, rarely is there suspense about which teams get into the hockey tournament.

The numbers are there online. All that is left for fans, players and coaches, usually, is to find out where they will be sent.

“If there’s any subjectivity involved, it’s in the criteria that we use in that statistics package,” said Tom Nevala, the committee chairman. “So if you want to look at it that way, if we make an impact on which teams make the tournament from a criteria standpoint, that’s done before the season ever starts and how we’ve set up the math when we meet in June.

“After that, it’s up to how the teams fare with their record and who they’ve played and their strength of schedule and things like that. Basically, everyone kind of goes into the season knowing how it’s going to turn out based on those criteria and how they perform.”

Contrast that with what the men’s basketball committee chairman, Mike Bobinski, said earlier this month about teams under consideration passing the so-called eye test.

“We look beyond the pure results and pure numbers,” Bobinski said. “How has that team looked over an extended amount of time? Even among the teams that are generally considered to be among the top teams in the country, if you look at their individual results, there are going to be a couple in there for darn near every team where you say, How the heck did that happen?”

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In hockey, all the games count the same, whether a first-round exit from the conference playoffs or an October win over a highly ranked team from another part of the country. The Ratings Percentage Index, which factors the winning percentage of teams, their opponents and the opponents of their opponents, plays a significant part in the math. Records against common opponents and other teams under consideration, defined as with an R.P.I. rating of .500 or better, also contribute to the formula that determines where the 11 at-large spots go. The tournament champions for each of the five conferences receive automatic bids.

By next season, there will be 59 Division I teams and 6 leagues, meaning one fewer at-large bid available. The Central Collegiate Hockey Association will fold, and the Big Ten and the National Collegiate Hockey Conference will be formed from the core of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. The W.C.H.A. will play on, with the remnants of the C.C.H.A.

The pending shake-up is not likely to hurt the intrigue surrounding this year’s tournament. Neither will the field, which will not have a clear front-runner.

“It just wouldn’t shock me if a No. 4 seed bit a No. 1 seed or a No. 2 seed in the rear end and wound up in Pittsburgh,” the CBS Sports Network analyst Dave Starman said, referring to the site of the Frozen Four.

If there is a controversy to sort out, it is the future of the four four-team regionals.

Next weekend, they will be played in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Manchester, N.H.; Toledo, Ohio; and Providence, R.I. There might not be any of the hosts (Michigan, New Hampshire, Bowling Green State and Brown) in the tournament, and none of those arenas are on anyone’s actual home ice. The committee tries to draw the best crowds by the way it assigns the regions, but coaches in the sport have been pushing for campus sites to create a better atmosphere.

Minnesota, for example, could play at a packed Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, which seats more than 18,000, for a W.C.H.A. semifinal game and then see 4,000 fans in the stands at a regional final. Host teams are automatically placed in their region if they are in the tournament, which can provide a significant advantage for a lower seed.

A version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2013, on Page SP9 of the New York edition with the headline: No Pins Or Needles For Picks In N.C.A.A. . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe